Art Lovers discussion

Do you think that the ladder in Rauschenberg’s “Winter Pool” transforms the piece, as great art should do?

I posted this question then the picture and then...left it!

So, if you would like to return here... what are your thoughts about this piece?

By "transforms the piece", what do you think they are intending to say? What does adding the ladder do for you (if anything)?

And do you think that by adding that ladder, it makes this piece 'great art'?

I read up a little bit more about this piece. It isn’t one with which I am familiar. The question was posted on the “Questions from the Met” site.

This style of his is called a Combine From the late 1950s to early 1960s because he uses various objects to form a collage on two different canvasses, ‘the height of a man’, it says. The canvasses are attached to the wall above the floor but the ladder begins at the floor and leans against the wall between the two pieces. With the ladder coming from the floor going into the painting, it is ‘inviting’ the viewer to step into the painting. This is how it “transforms" the piece.

This makes a lot more sense to me, sometimes I need a little bit of history about a piece of art before I can form an opinion on my own.
I do think the ladder adds to the piece, it does transform the piece. The fact that it is inviting me, the viewer, to step right up there and check it all out exudes confidence in his work. He has something to show and is bringing me right here to see it.

I have to say I not only appreciate this work, I like it.